Cooking tips and techniques that come handy in your.

Monday, December 26, 2016

Merry Christmas to all my readers! I hope you had a great day yesterday and have some time to relax and enjoy spending time with loved ones this week. We were able to visit both my family and my husband's family on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day - including seeing his nephews and my one-month-old niece - and I've been thoroughly spoilt in terms of presents (my husband did good: Mulberry, Lulu Guinness and Ted Baker boxes were all under the tree - not handbags but a wallet, a vanity case and shoes). My sister gave me something cool - a Blog Planner book which I'm looking forward to using, and seeing if it will help me improve my blog this year!

I've been so busy over the last few weeks and months I haven't been posting as much as normal and just realised this morning that it's Monday and I've no idea what we are eating this week, and while the freezer is pretty full, there's very little fresh food in the house, so I'd better do some shopping when the supermarkets re-open (Dec 26 is a public holiday in the UK though I know it isn't elsewhere).

Having said that, this week will be pretty easy as I'm away a bit!Monday - Boxing Day
My mother-in-law always hosts a big family gathering with an amazing buffet so that's breakfast and dinner covered. I'm going over there shortly to help prepare the food!

Tuesday - bank holiday
Probably leftovers from yesterday!

Wednesday
My husband is back at work unfortunately. I'm heading back down to Southampton to see my sister, her partner and their baby, as we only saw them briefly on Christmas day and I'm now going for an overnight visit. My husband will have dinner with his mum so I don't need to worry about food.

Thursday
I'm expecting to be home in time for dinner; as I don't know if I will have been able to do any shopping, I'll cook something from the freezer. I had this on the meal plan before Christmas but didn't do it: lasagne (from the freezer) for me, chicken chargrills for him

Friday
A whole day off at home for me though my husband is at work. Definitely going to the supermarket today if I haven't already by now!
Lunch: soup with fresh bread - tomato for him, leek and potato for me
Dinner: curry with leftover turkey if there is any

Saturday - New Year's Eve
Lunch: bacon sandwich
Dinner: With friends

Sunday - New Year's Day
Brunch: with friends
Dinner: steak and chips. I'll use the steak rub that a friend gave me for Christmas on it.

Thursday, December 22, 2016

As I mentioned when I posted about my Christmas cake, I was sent a selection of cupcake toppers from My Cupcake Toppers for review. You can order icing or rice paper toppers with pictures of anything from Christmas to Eid to baby shower, Disney princesses or football teams or even Breaking Bad, the TV show. Prices start at £1.20 for 12 standard rice paper cupcake toppers up to £6 for ones made of icing. As well as that, you can design your own for a bargain price of £2.70 for the smallest size - that's actually a very appealing idea! They even have an in-house design service if you are short of inspiration.

I decided to order a selection to try out the different rice papers and icing they are printed on. As you might have seen, I ordered a large 7.5 inch circular cake topper printed onto a thin sheet of edible icing, to go on top of my Christmas cake. I cut it out, removed the plastic backing and simply placed it on top of the cake - perfect!

I then ordered a set of 12 Christmas designs for cupcakes made of icing, plus some Family Guy toppers (I love that show) on premium rice paper, and some Lego Star Wars on regular rice paper. In both cases the rice paper was pre-cut which only costs a fraction more, but gives a much more professional finish than taking a pair of scissors to a sheet of rice paper yourself.

Did you know the reason why rice paper toppers sometimes curl up when you put them on cupcakes? It's to do with the moisture in the icing, so you are better off waiting until the icing has hardened but is still ever so slightly soft, so you can press on the topper.

What's interesting though that is when I (*accidentally* - ahem) put the rice paper toppers on while the icing was still too wet, the standard rice paper topper did curl at the edges while the premium topper - which is noticeably thicker - didn't.

I was then able to flatten the Lego Star Wars topper when the icing had set a bit. Both toppers were larger than I was expecting and worked really nicely, and didn't taste of a lot but I wasn't expecting them to!

The Lego Star Wars cupcake is just the thing to eat when you are opening the next window on your Lego Star Wars advent calendar!

Finally I had some trouble when it came to the icing toppers. The icing discs were printed on a plastic sheet but unlike with the large cake topper I couldn't peel off the backing plastic. I spent ages picking at the edges wondering why they weren't coming off, then decided to contact the company. The My Cupcake Toppers website advises contacting them via Facebook which I did and I was pleasantly surprised - given it was in the evening - to have a reply just a couple of minutes later.

They told me what to do and also informed me that the instructions were on their website and on the back of the delivery note. I had already looked at the FAQ on their website and went to the 'cutting' section but this is about buying the topper discs cut out already; I totally missed the 'instructions' section further down, and I would never have thought to take the address label off the front of the envelope and check for something printed on the back!

The instructions, once I had them, were easy to follow even if they did surprise me, as I've never done this before. You need to dry them out in a cool oven (50-60 degrees C) for 5-10 minutes and they will peel off.

I really liked these because they stay stiff and flat and look really professional. They are quite big, taste nicer than the rice paper and I really liked the set of Christmas designs that I chose.

So here is the recipe for the gingerbread cupcakes themselves, which comes from a book called Celebration Cupcakes, byTamara Jane.

In another bowl cream the butter and the sugar and mix in the sugar. Beat until light and fluffy.

Add the eggs, beating the mixture after you add each one, then fold in half the dry ingredient, half the chopped ginger and sour cream, and mix well. Then fold in the rest of the flour, ginger and cream.

Spoon the mixture into the cupcake cases and bake for 20 minutes. Allow to cool.

To make the buttercream, beat the butter and the icing sugar. Add the vanilla essence and mix in. Using a piping bag and a star nozzle, pipe swirls onto the top of the cupcakes. Top with cupcake toppers as shown if desired.

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Every year I say I'm going to make a Christmas cake and Stir Up Sunday comes and goes (I'm never sure if that is just for Christmas puddings or Christmas cake as well), and then by the time I am ready to do it, it's only a week or so before Christmas. The idea of a Christmas cake - essentially a rich fruit cake - is that you soak the fruit in booze (usually brandy) and then feed the cake with more alcohol over several weeks. So it's not really something that I want to make at the last minute, though I'm sure some recipes for doing just that exist!

This year I've been really busy at work, and often working on weekends, so haven't done any Christmas baking at all - apart from this cake. This year I did manage to get myself organised early. I couldn't actually make the cake on Stir Up Sunday as I intended - I got out all the ingredients and then read I was supposed to soak the fruit in brandy for three days, so put them all away again! I soaked the fruit from mid-week and made the cake the following weekend.

Since then - about three weeks ago - I've only remembered to feed the cake with brandy twice, but used quite a lot both times so hopefully that will be enough!

I have the Great British Bake Off Christmas recipe book which is full of things that look amazing - I received it as a gift one Christmas but haven't made that many things from it. When it comes to Christmas cake though - very traditional, British cake - who else but to follow than Mary Berry? As the BBC Good Food website puts it, she has been making Christmas cakes for longer than GBBO co-host Paul Hollywood has been alive (probably!). Her recipe for a classic Christmas cake is available online here.

This is the recipe that I used, but I covered the cake using 500g marzipan and used 2/3 of the suggested quantity of royal icing. It seemed a lot and the amount I used was plenty to cover the whole cake, though whether it would have been better with a thicker layer remains to be seen.

As I was short of time, I decorated the cake with royal icing and a cake topper I was sent to review by My Cupcake Toppers - read more on this below.

Here are a few pictures of the different stages, from soaking the fruit (top right), then moving down and across the cake batter, and in the main picture, the cake once it had come out of the oven. A little darker than I would have liked but I'm sure it's fine!

I turned the cake upside down to remove the greaseproof paper and decided to ice it this way up so it would have a flatter top.

This looks like fondant but it's actually marzipan - I bought a pack (I know on GBBO you would be expected to make your own!) and covered the cake with it.

I made up some royal icing using icing sugar, egg whites and lemon juice and covered the cake. It's easiest if you do this on a cake turntable if you have one, and use a crank knife (a palette knife with part of the handle at an angle) so you can run the knife around the edge of the cake and smooth it all off.

Here it is looking a bit smoother!

As I was quite short of time I was very glad to have just received a few things from My Cupcake Toppers to review. This is a website where you can buy pictures printed onto icing or rice paper - everything from Christmas to TV shows to your own design. I'll talk more about these when I review the ones they sent me to go on cupcakes tomorrow.

One thing I hadn't seen before was the option to have a large 7.5 inch round cake topper printed onto icing, that I could cut around and place on my cake. I chose a snowflake design and when it came - protected in a stiff envelope - I found that the icing was a flexible sheet (rather than hard and brittle) meaning I could easily cut around it and place it on my cake. It worked perfectly (delivery was very swift) and looked really good on the cake.

I finished the cake with some Christmas washi tape from Hobbycraft around the edge of the cake board and a Santa and Christmas tree made of royal icing I bought from Sainsbury's when they were reduced to 25p each in the January sale last year!

Here are a couple of pictures of the finished cake...

And a few days later after I cut into it to give the first couple of slices to family friends as we were seeing them for dinner. I'm no expert - until recently I didn't really like Christmas cakes at all - but it tasted pretty good, like a Christmas cake ought to taste!

I'm sharing this with Love Cake, hosted by Ness at Jibber Jabber UK, as her theme is winter wonderland.

Monday, December 19, 2016

I can't believe it's Christmas next week!
The year has really flown by, with one obvious major highlight - I got married in June! Which seems such a long time ago now... the last few weeks and even months have been so busy, I'm hoping things will settle down a bit in the new year.

Where are you all spending Christmas? We are going backwards and forwards between my family and my in-laws which means I'm not cooking this year. Normally I'd at least make a dessert to take with us but I'm not sure I am even going to have time to do that this year - but now I've said that, I do want to try to make something!

Monday
I've got a day off to use the last of my annual leave. Christmas shopping and gift wrapping is done, so I'm going to do some baking and some studying as the course I'm doing has been pushed to one side as I've been working so much!
Lunch - broccoli and mackerel gratin from this recipe
Dinner - Weightwatchers roast vegetable pilaff with sausages
dessert - butterscotch pudding from Slow Cooker cookbook that I was going to make last week but didn't

Tuesday
lunch - potato, leek and cheese soup from this recipe
dinner - out with family friends

Wednesday
lunch- sandwich (will be with a supplier)
dinner - out with a friend

Sunday, December 18, 2016

I made this anniversary card for my parents using some very quick shortcuts - it looks like it would have taken a lot longer than it did!

I think I got this pack of three rolls of tape from The Works - the intricate patterns are really nice and the tape just needs peeling and cutting off to the right length, it's so easy!

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I used the tape to make a border along the top and bottom of the card, and used a heart topper I bought in a pack ages ago. The topper uses quilling to make a heart shape - a technique I've been meaning to try for a while and not got around to. The 'happy anniversary' sentiment is a simple silver outline sticker to finish the card off.

Saturday, December 17, 2016

I've made broccoli and stilton soup before but not used Cheddar in it. I decided to try another recipe from 'America's Most Wanted Recipes' - I went through a bit of a phase of using this book a few months back - and like many of the recipes in this book, it called for velveeta cheese. You can't get this in the UK and after reading a description online I decided that Cheddar was relatively close in flavour and texture.

Unusually, as broccoli soup is often vegetarian, and based on pretty much just broccoli and vegetable stock, this soup uses canned chicken soup as a base! It did taste really nice and though not as low calorie as the broccoli soup I would normally make it was very filling and would make a good lunch at this time of year - something you could take to work as well as enjoy at home.

Heat the water, potato, stock cube, onion and broccoli in a large pan until the vegetables are tender. Stir in the soup and Cheddar and heat through, stirring occasionally, until the cheese has melted.

Friday, December 16, 2016

The Sonoran is a desert in Arizona and this pasta dish is described in 'America's Most Wanted Recipes' as 'dressed in a spicy Southwestern cheese sauce'. As usual I did my own take on it, leaving out ingredients I don't like (jalapeno peppers and black beans) which probably changed the recipe a fair bit, and I couldn't get hold of the American velveeta cheese in the ingredients list, but I really liked the way this turned out - it tasted really good!

So for the version that I did, to serve 2 you need:

2 tbsp. butter or marg

1/2 onion, finely chopped

1 clove garlic, peeled and crushed

2 tbsp. plain flour

250ml chicken stock

pinch of salt

100ml milk

dash of Tabasco sauce

1/2 cup grated Cheddar

1/4 cup grated Parmesan

1/2 cup tomato salsa

1/4 cup sour cream

2 chicken breasts

Penne pasta to serve

Cook the pasta in a pan of boiling salted water until tender. Open out the chicken breasts so they are butterflied and either fry using a little Fry Light or oil, or grill or oven cook depending on your preference, until the chicken is cooked through.

Meanwhile melt the butter in a large saucepan and fry the onion and garlic. Stir in the flour to make a roux and gradually stir in the chicken stock until you have a smooth sauce. Season, add the milk, Tabasco and cheeses and heat until the cheese has melted and the sauce has thickened.

Add the salsa and sour cream and stir until blended.

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Drain the cooked pasta and stir into the sauce, and top with the chicken to serve.

Thursday, December 15, 2016

Back in the summer I had a lesson at the London Barbecue School with a group of other bloggers, courtesy of Branston Pickle, which you can read about here. We tried out a few recipes and this is one I decided to try at home.

These chicken tacos have added zing from Sweet Chilli Branston Pickle - I love sweet chilli chicken so even though the recipe on the Branston website said to use the regular small chunk pickle I decided this one would be nice.

I didn't bother making the salsa from tomato, kidney beans and avocado as neither my husband nor I would like it, but you can find the instructions on the recipe link above. For the chicken tacos themselves, to serve 2, you need:

Wednesday, December 14, 2016

It's been a couple of years since I've had time to make my own Christmas cards - at least. This year I had a week off work in November to use up annual leave and spent most of the week tackling tasks around the house, but I did allow myself one whole day to do fun things - and spent a good part of that day making cards.

I've mentioned before that I got a great discount on a three-month subscription to three different card making magazines. Each one comes with free gifts and as it was getting close to the end of the year, the freebies tended to be for making Christmas cards.

This one, Cardmaking & Papercraft, came with a selectin of foil-finished cardboard pictures, frames and toppers. I thought it was a bit boring to start with - other free gifts have included rubber stamps and decoupage sets - but actually when you are making Christmas cards you often want something that won't take too long. Plus, the pictures were lovely and have resulted in some of my favourite Christmas cards that I've made so far.

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I copied the suggested designs in the magazine which were very good - I like this first one most of all. I used a piece of backing paper to cover a square white card blank, then stuck a pink sparkly frame at an angle. Using the largest reindeer card topper I stuck it on the front of the card and tucked a couple of corners through the frame - I love this effect. Then I cut small pieces of border pieces and stuck them across the four corners of the card. Finally I used a small circular card topper in the corner of the reindeer picture, and a sentiment topper across the bottom.

This second card is more of a clean and simple design, again taken from an idea in the magazine. I covered a square white card blank with a piece of light purple paper that had a Christmas bauble design down one side, and stuck a border topper a few centimetres up from the bottom.

I used another large reindeer card topper again at an angle in the middle of the card, and a Christmas wishes sentiment tag to the left. I think the tag looks a bit odd on its own and in retrospect maybe needed some ribbon but I still quite like the card as it is.

Even if you enjoy card making as much as me, it can be really hard to find time to make cards. As I only managed to make a few, and had already bought some cards I wanted to specifically send this year (they have cows on, perfect now I'm married and Mrs Cowe!) so have decided to keep hold of these until next year!

I've just come across a website called Paperless Post which provides both online and printed cards (as well as other stationery) which is donating to (RED), the charity which partners with retailers to send money to the Global Fund that fights HIV and AIDS.

Each purchase from the (PAPERLESS POST)REDChristmas collection supports (RED)’s fight for a world without AIDS. 8% of the price of every paper card and 25% of the price of every online card goes to the charity, which I think is a good thing for them to do, so I'm happy to help publicise the campaign (and have received no incentive or compensation for doing so).

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

I haven't actually done any proper baking for ages - I've been far too busy at work and with other things to do at home. Since I treated myself to the latest Great British Bake Off cookery book recently I realised I wasn't going to have a lot of chance to bake from it so decided to try one of the savoury recipes. I was intrigued by this roasted vegetable pie which used cashews as a form of protein, and decided to make it but change some of the vegetables. Instead of aubergine, courgette and red pepper, I used carrot, sweet potato and butternut squash.

The original recipe is here; I'm not going to type it all out but essentially you roast the vegetables with some garlic, oregano, salt, pepper and chilli flakes and allow them to cool.

Roll out some ready-made puff pastry and spread the veg across the pastry; at this point I added some red onion I had softened in a frying pan as well. Add the cashews and some sun-dried tomatoes.

Place another piece of pastry on top, press down the edges and crimp with a fork, and make a little air hole in the top. Brush with beaten egg and bake in the oven at 220C for about 25 minutes until golden brown.

This pie was delicious; the cashews soften a little and provide a nice texture contrast to the softer vegetables and I really like the way it looks! All this needs is some green veg or a green salad to serve for a hearty, filling vegetarian dinner.

This is something I think you could serve even as the main course for a vegetarian Christmas dinner, so I am sharing this with Charlotte's Lively Kitchen for the Food Calendar challenge.

Monday, December 12, 2016

This week there is a planned train strike. I only live about 9 miles from where I work but it takes at least an hour and a quarter to commute each way - often much longer, thanks to the disaster that is Southern Trains. So many trains are cancelled or delayed, and I've lost count of how many strikes there have been so far this year - it's unbelievable. Luckily most strikes have been conductors rather than drivers, which means most (but not all) of my trains have been running. However, this week there are three days of drivers strikes which means there will be no trains at all, so the only option that I can see for me and my husband is to work from home. So I'm planning meals that will work either way if the strike happens or is called off!

Mondayhoney, ginger and garlic chickenwith spiralized veg for me and potatoes for him, that I was going to make last week but didn't Thanks to the train strike and taking hours to get home, we went to the chip shop for dinner.

Friday, December 9, 2016

Dreamgirls is one of the best musicals I've ever seen and you really must see it if you get the chance! Starring Amber Riley, best known as the wonderful Mercedes from Glee (yes, I'm a fan), it opened a couple of weeks ago in London's West End. I bought tickets literally the minute they went on sale at the beginning of this year and managed to get two seats in the third row for last Saturday night.

I took my mother-in-law, as she loved the Dreamgirls movie and really likes gospel music, and we had a fantastic time. The musical doesn't really deviate from the film so there are not really any surprises (unlike Legally Blonde, one of my other favourites - as the film isn't a musical, the way it was done in the West End was brilliant). But it's such a good film with fantastic songs, I knew the stage show was going to be good.

But it is so far beyond good - I'm not normally one for hyperbole (in fact an old boss used to tell me my writing was too dry) but I can't say enough good things about Dreamgirls. Amber Riley steals the show - her powerhouse voice that you might be familiar with in Glee is even more astounding in real life, especially when you are only three rows from the front and can see the emotion she puts into every song. The actress who plays Deena Jones - Beyoncé's role in the film - was also outstanding. I hadn't come across Liisi Lafontaine before but she is an experienced musical theatre performer and the duet she does towards the end with Amber Riley makes your hair stand on end.

As as aside, I discovered from the cast list and Wikipedia that Lafontaine's father is the voiceover legend Don Lafontaine, who you probably won't have heard of, but you will have heard him boom 'In a world where....' at the start of many movie trailers!

So to sum up: the choreography is fantastic, the costumes dazzling (often literally), the male leads hold their own and are very good but really this is a show about the women - Deena and Effie - and I don't think there could have been anyone in line for casting as Effie other than Amber Riley. She received more than one standing ovation (after her signature song, 'I am telling you I'm not going' and of course at the end) which was well deserved. I hope Lafontaine does really well from the back of this as well as she was fantastic.

To go on to what I was actually going to write about, here's my review of Kaspar's at the Savoy. It was a rare treat to go somewhere so fancy, but my mother-in-law and I decided to make a night of it, get dressed up and have a lovely meal - the fact that the theatre was next door also helped!

From the moment you set foot through the revolving doors the magic begins with a tall and beautifully decorated Christmas tree. We walked through the foyer where a few people were still enjoying afternoon tea and entered the restaurant. The best description I can give is from the website itself:

It was gorgeous and the service excellent as you might expect - and the portions small as you might also expect! The menu is very expensive - eg Dover sole for £39, a rack of lamb for £31, caviar and oysters - but the restaurant does a pre-theatre menu for a very reasonable £25 for two courses or £28 for three.

I started with a Kaspar's martini which was very strong - I didn't quite understand what was meant by a "spray of vermouth" but it was pretty much just neat vodka!

Guinea fowl ballotine - a sort of terrine - was my choice of starter, which came with truffle quince jam, lamb's lettuce and hazelnuts which was very tasty and beautifully presented. For my main course, I had pan-seared stone bass with chantenay carrot textures, charred leeks and tarragon nage. I Your guess is as good as mine!

The fish was a small fillet (no bones at all); the carrot was in ribbons and I think also a smear across the plate, unless this was the nage. I actually mis-read it as sage, but according to the internet, a nage is a flavoured liquid used for poaching delicate foods, typically seafood. So I've learnt something! I also had a side of potatoes which brought an extra charge of £5 (a bit cheeky I think) - the meal was really good and more filling than I expected, though that was probably down to the potatoes.

Finally we decided to have dessert and my wine plum tart was interesting - sweet but also a bit sharp at the same time. The base was almost biscuit-y and the plum quite tart (literally); the shortbread and vanilla ice cream it came with was really good but the promised cardamom marshmallow was so tiny - a few dots around the plate - that I almost missed it!

It was a great meal and a great experience and combined with the musical it was one of the best nights out I've had in ages!